UCL PhD students Daniel Elson and Adam Funnell have been successful in a funding bid to run a variety of interactive demonstrations at On Light, a multi-disciplinary festival taking place in London from 1-4 May, organised by UCL and the Wellcome Collection to celebrate the Year of Light. UNLOC's demonstrations will include a series of hands-on exhibits that will allow visitors to learn how we use light to communicate. Visitors will discover how data is carried by light through optical fibres, and can have a go at replicating the way light can carry all the data we use on a day-to-day basis.

Daniel Elson

Daniel Elson said “As it is the international year of light we are trying to show how light is used in everyday aspects of life. The fun part involves wearing a headset with a microphone which will be connected to a laser transceiver which sends your voice to another person who will be wearing another transceiver. This stall will be placed outside on Malet Place on Saturday 2nd May coinciding with the Institute of Making's Open Day and a whole host of other light based activities.”

Adam Funnell

Adam Funnell, a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Photonic Systems Development PhD student, said: “This fantastic collaborative event beween UCL and the Wellcome Collection will give us a chance to show the public the hidden light-based display technologies behind many of our day to day devices. We're very excited to showcase our research within such a broad festival, which includes artists, musicians and dancers responding to light, alongside demonstrations of cutting edge light technologies. It will also be a great chance to show the public just how simple it can be to code and program their own colour changing LED device to take home - hopefully we can inspire some engineers of the future to continue experimenting with light and coding.”

For more information about the UCL-Wellcome interactive event titled ‘On Light’ see: